


Being Proud

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Coming Out, Coming Out In Front of a Live Audience, Eddie Kaspbrak & Stanley Uris Live, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 13:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Everyone and their mother has probably done a Richie-comes-out-during-his-standup-act fic and I have in fact also already done this very cool thing, but I came up with stuff I didn't put in my first fic and also I wanted a version where Stan is not dead because he deserves better.





	Being Proud

“So… this is my last Chicago show.” Richie pauses to give the crowd room to react, Eddie can just see his grin in profile from backstage. “I know, I know, _ weird _ that a club wouldn’t want to extend my contract after I had a mental breakdown and fucked off to my hometown without telling anyone what I was doing. Wild, right? You think they’d be jumping on me after that. Can’t let _ that _ guy get away. That guy’s a real catch. Yeah, yeah, so… We’ll see where I go from tanking my career, really looking forward to that. But I am going to miss Chicago, I’m going to miss a few things about Chicago.”

Eddie smiles softly. He’s been staying with Richie, since getting out of the hospital and serving divorce papers to the woman he never should have married-- first at the townhouse, now in the crappy apartment Richie’s been keeping in Chicago while he had an extended engagement, and soon…

There’s a place in LA, which Richie had warned him would be just as crappy, just as bachelor chic, but someone keeps the dust from building up, and it’s…

And it’s temporary. It was the place he could call his and keep most of his stuff in first when he was touring, then when he had a residency in Vegas, then when he was in Chicago. His LA apartment hasn’t been as temporary as any of those places, but it’s still a crappy apartment, he’s just never had a reason to buy a house before, and now…

Now the two of them are discussing it. Discussing looking around at places, looking at property together. Richie already has a favorite, just from looking online, and it’s… ridiculously big, but that does mean it has room to host all the Losers at once, any time they want to throw a reunion party. And while Eddie knows he’s going to go crazy keeping the pool obsessively clean, he also knows his temporary physical therapist would be very happy about his having a pool, and there’s a lot less to worry about if he and Richie are usually the only ones in it. He doesn’t care for a public pool, even the one he knows is regularly cleaned at the PT clinic. 

“The number one thing I’m going to miss about Chicago… it’s got nothing to do with culture, it doesn’t even have anything to do with _ comedy_, it’s… one hundred percent, what I’m going to miss most about Chicago is my barista. Yeah, yeah. The coffee place down the block from my apartment, right? It’s a good place, the coffee’s fine, what I like is… So my favorite barista, I call him Little Johnny. Which is… _ weird_, because he’s a fully grown adult man. I mean he’s twenty, but he’s regular size, he’s a regular-sized man, he’s six feet tall or something, I don’t know. And also because his nametag says Steve. So, Little Stevie. Might be a better nickname. Anyway, so this guy is _ the _ best barista in all of Chicago if you have a hangover. In all the time I’ve known him, he has _ never _ initiated a conversation with me, he has never even initiated eye contact, and when he does talk, he whispers, like… always.”

Eddie is paying attention to Richie’s show, because he’s going completely off-script, as far as his manager and agent and ghostwriters are concerned, and it feels good watching him be more of _ himself_… but he is a little distracted with thoughts of a house. Fighting in an IKEA, making up… Richie will, he knows, fret over whether Eddie is in any shape to build or move furniture, but he also knows Richie will believe him if he says he can do something. Richie’s always believed him when it came down to it. 

The big house with the pool might be nice, if it meant lying out there together. Rubbing sunscreen into Richie’s back, splashing around a little with him, maybe they’d get a nice two-person hammock… And the photos of the kitchen… yeah, he can see himself there. The master bathroom looked easy to keep clean, in the photos. The outside… well, they’d texted the rest of the Losers the pictures, and they’d all said it was beautiful, and Eddie isn’t used to having an opinion about where he lives, but… he thinks it’s enough for him to know they all like it. 

“Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, Stevie’s spoken to me twice. The first time was--” He leans over his microphone, voice going into a stage-whisper. “_You look like you partied, do you want a sandwich with a fried egg on it_? And I’m like… what? I didn’t know you could talk in… sentences? _ Do you want a sandwich with a fried egg on it_?_ It’s good for if you’ve been partying, I’ll give you one. On the house_. Like, I’m pretty sure you’re in college, I’m almost forty, if anything I should be buying you a sandwich. And he looks me up and down like… _ OKAY_. So I bought a sandwich and I tipped him, like… a twenty. And after that, mostly I’d just go in, I’d get my regular, and he’d give me a look and a nod which I took to mean _ hey, man, you party_? _ You party last night_? Or, he’d give me a look and a nod like _ Oh, you look like you didn’t party, do you need to know where parties happen so you can party again_? And there’s no way this kid actually goes to parties, right? Because he can’t even have a standard barista conversation at regular volume, and he looks terrified when there are more than eight people in the coffee shop. But he’s great, he’s very supportive of me going out and drinking and then needing someone else to make my coffee the next day and maybe a sandwich with a fried egg on it. He’s a great fucking enabler. I’m thinking about adopting him-- I think that’s the level of responsibility I can handle as a parent, a twenty year old man who doesn’t need me for anything. But obviously I can’t make a decision as weighty as adoption alone.”

Eddie tries not to think about this, it’s a joke, and it’s… He tries not to think about this. 

“And the second conversation he starts with me is…” Richie carries on. “I walk in there and he just says to me, point blank, _ Mister Tozier, I don’t think your girlfriend is a real person who exists in the world_. Exact words. And he goes on, he tells me… like, the people who work there all know who I am and they’ve seen bits of my act at least, and so he goes on to say, you know, no one’s ever _ seen _ my girlfriend. And like… I’m not a guy who does red carpets or anything, so it’s not like I go out in front of photographers with a date for, like… awards shows or movie premiers, I’m a stand-up comedian and I mostly like to stay at home the rest of the time. But he points out I’ve _ never _ brought a girlfriend into the coffee shop, I’ve never bought a second coffee to go… he’s just like, _ I don’t think she exists_. And, uh… and that’s true, my girlfriend is the fabrication of like three dudes who used to control my act and my material, who thought I needed to tell dumb jokes about having a girlfriend I clearly don’t belong with because we have nothing in common and don’t seem to like each other as people. You know, relatable straight guy stuff. Why do guys date women they don’t seem to be interested in as people? The last time I dated a woman I wasn’t interested in, it was because I was gay as fuck, terrified of people knowing I was gay as fuck, and also just a complete ass-clown. And she was _ hot_, too, objectively I could see it. She took her top off, you know, third date, she climbs in my lap, takes her top off, and says _ does this give you any ideas_? _ What do you want to do with these_? And I-- and I…”

Richie mimes reaching up and squeezing a breast. He makes a honking sound.

“I did that. I did that with my mouth, I honked. Like a bike horn. And we did not go on a fourth date. She’s topless in my lap, I’m fully flaccid and making bike horn noises, and we did not go on a fourth date, and I feel like you’re waiting for me to say I was just kidding about the gay thing, but I’m not. I’ve got a boyfriend who can pretty much confirm how gay I am. Well, I mean, he can confirm how into gay sex I am. You would have to find the woman I honked if you needed someone to confirm how not into women I am, and she probably told all her friends about it, I just wasn’t famous enough to care about back then.”

And Eddie had known this was coming, this was part of the whole reason he had thrown out the material that was written for him. Still, he feels the same tension in his gut that he thinks Richie must be feeling in his own, and when Richie turns to glance briefly backstage, he gives him a reassuring smile, places his hand over his heart.

“I was going to be one of those really sad closet cases, you know?” Richie says, getting back into his act. “Which is ridiculous! So many people are out now, so many people are out. But I come from a small town where life is… pretty shitty if you discover you like boys. So I was going to be one of those guys who just… doesn’t have a life, makes shit up about being _ so _ into women but you’ll never see him with one, just… real depressing shit, you know, that was my plan. And then a couple things happened, and one of them is my boyfriend. He deserves the best version of me, and that’s a version who won’t, like… fuckin’ fake it. And the other is, I got a letter from my childhood best friend telling me I should. I mean he didn’t tell me to come out, specifically. And by the time the letter got to me, by the time I got the letter, he’s… um, he was in a coma. And we didn’t know if he was going to come out of it. But I got this letter from him, guy I hadn’t seen in… years. Telling me to be proud, and hold onto what’s good and important in life, and anyway, I just got the call that he woke up, and that seemed as good a sign as any to just… say it. I’ve got a lot to be proud of, I’ve got a lot to be happy about, my boyfriend deserves to have his hand held in public, my best friend deserves to know I actually listen to his advice because he’s right about a lot. So here I am. Gay as fuck. And I think it was very smart and sexy of me to hold onto that reveal until the last night of my gig, just in case it went really wrong and I got fired.”

And of course he glances back to Eddie again now, to see him struggling in vain not to cry… but that’s fine.

He goes back to the jokes, the kind that won’t challenge the audience to do much thinking, and Eddie snaps a picture from offstage, texting it to the rest of the Losers.

_ Richie’s taking Stan’s advice, he just came out on stage. _He adds, before turning his phone back off. He can look at the response later-- for now, he’s just enjoying the show.


End file.
